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But what about Ada’s locket, Bron thought, found on the ground beneath the library’s broken window after the fire, which turned out not to be Ada’s locket at all? Darcy had thought it was Ada’s and Ada had said it was Darcy’s, that “brother” and “sister” had one and the same likeness. He looked at her now, at her resting figure: she continued to wear it around her neck. There was something in this, he was sure.
Bron’s task now was to thread together these singular events, fill in the gaps to reach a conclusion. Nothing happened in isolation—there was a point to everything. The more he dwelled on it, the more he convinced himself it was up to him to untangle these events, for him to get to the bottom of. As he drifted in and out of sleep, the characters in his life merged with violent and heinous visions, shadows of moments and characters that already took residence in his mind. It was far easier to discern something from what he knew rather than what he didn’t, and this seeking of answers wreaked havoc upon the household.
In the first of his fantasies it was the taciturn housekeeper. Her apparition, black gowned, white aproned, keys jingling in her hand as she glided through the dark hallway, incognito. Drawing back the gallery curtains to let in the morning light, Clarence progressed to the kitchen, where she ate breakfast at the island after hours or sat with tea in the breakfast room, neglectful of her work. She took slow bites of her toast and sipped apricot juice between swallows, her eyes poring over the newspaper. What words did she read? Black dots swirling around the page, a mess of spilled ink, a colony of ants. Her eyes were filled, not with the black and white of the print, but the map of the house as she plotted her scheme—the long corridor, the library to the right, Mr. Edwards’s bedroom far along to the left. She had accounted for their whereabouts, Bron’s own too, and would wait on after her duties were complete into the late hours of the night, where she would lock herself into a discrete roomin the farthest corner of the house, a room to which only she held the key.
How long did she wait for them all to take themselves to bed? Then, when the house was still, did she tread with muffled feet down the stretched hallway, guided by candlelight, and into the vacant library, where she set fire to the very drapes she’d drawn open that same morning. Shehadbeen there after hours, at the scene of the crime—just as Bron and Ada needed her the most. And then—he thought! A couple of weeks later, it was she who had picked the locket off the ground outside the library’s window and handed it to Darcy, claiming it was Ada’s. Darcy mustn’t have thought anything of it himself, having given it quickly over to him. Was the locket really the central clue in all this? If so, what did it mean? Or was it in fact some kind of decoy? Did Clarence know what he knew, that Ada had in fact been inside the library that night before the fire? Had she seen her on her way in, and therefore performed stumbling upon the misplaced locket in the hope of removing herself as a suspect in the night’s dealings?
And months later, she would enact another of her schemes. Was it drops of poison she let fall into Mr. Edwards’s yellow tea, her special brew, bringing his life to a slow but calculated end? Very possibly—that was often what was used. But what of the motive? What would drive Clarence to such actions? Perhaps she and Mr. Edwards had once been lovers, engaging in an affair that Mr. Edwards ended prior or maybe even after the death of his beloved wife, and failing to commit himself to her thereafter, she sought revenge to heal her broken heart. All those years of loyalty, of pining … If she couldn’t be with him, nobody could.
Was this plausible? Bron had noticed the way Clarence lingered close to Mr. Edwards, how she’d clean the already sparkling vase that stood beside him and blush whenever he requested something from her. There was one time, in the middle of the afternoon, when he’d seen Mr. Edwards slip an envelope into her hands before quickly exiting the house. This he’d seen heropen—a wad of notes, bright as anything, which she thrust into her pocket before rushing away. What was he paying her off for? What secret?
No, it couldn’t be. Why would it all have happened now? Would a lover be able to endure so many years of unrequited love?Orhad they continued their affair in secret? Had it been going on under their very noses? Clarence, the avatar, the unlikely suspect, seeking her revenge at the most opportune moment, who’d looked at the photograph of Victoria Edwards in the photo album that night and in a fit of rage set the room alight with the very candle Ada had left burning behind the armchair.
The housekeeper did it. The housekeeper did it? Was it that simple? But what if she hadn’t done it?
In his mind’s eye, Clarence grew slimmer and shorter, wore a face more youthful and olive toned, one framed by pigtails that slithered down each side of her face. Now it was Ada who propped into his mind, a smart little girl who was far more capable of things than anyone gave her credit for.
If it wasn’t Clarence, then what about Ada? Ada, who’d kneeled at the rugs behind the wing-backed armchair and tossed aside her playthings, the schoolbooks she’d left in the library that night. Slowly, carefully, setting the room aflame—but why? What else would she have seen in those photographs to make her want to burn the place? What secret could she not share with him, her confidante?
He pressed the thought further. Ada had confessed to him that she believed she had set the library on fire, although it had been a mistake. But why let him in on that knowledge? Had it already been there for the taking, she thinking Darcy had indeed seen her? And therefore was it a distraction—a successful deflection to make him think her admission a childish whim? Who knew what went on behind those glossy eyes of hers? Did she begrudge Mr. Edwards and Darcy for their actions, for hiding the truth of who her mother was, and in some impulsive fervor, had she smashed the pillow over Mr. Edwards’s face, suffocating himunder the guise of a caregiver? The same hands that set Birdie free and into the mouth of a hungry dog.
Was she capable of that—Ada who snuggled up to Terence the teddy and who cried herself to sleep? In his half-awake state, he saw her face cast in moonlight, the tears dried as white specks on her cheeks. No, she was not capable of that.
This was what he feared most, his mind taking him to the darkest places, fabricating fantasies he couldn’t unsee. He was a fool for even thinking it. This little girl, she was just like him. Lonely and in need of a friend. He pinched himself, having slandered his image of her. But like a serpent eating its own tail, his thoughts were fed and fueled, developing into thoughts that kept him tossing and turning.
He slipped out of Ada’s bedroom and into his own, trying to get back to sleep. But he was guided through the night and the early hours of the morning by the single pressing thought: none of it could’ve been an accident.
So what of the most obvious culprits? Darcy, Giovanni, and Toni? The unbreakable trio, with so many secrets between them.
He imagined them now, on their escape to France. The furnishings of their minds where each was concerned with the desire to take hold of another’s hand on their walks. Darcy’s eyes would linger on the brownness of Giovanni’s skin at the lake, which darkened in the sun whilst he sought protection away from it, hiding in the shade of the closest tree. Darcy would have tried to look away in Toni’s presence, and Giovanni would have given him the pleasure of pretending not to notice, both desperately wanting to feel the wetness of one another’s skin after swinging from the rope that hung off the tree over the river. Over time, they would take more risks—swim naked in the waters, rub cream into each other’s backs. At college, they would kiss in the shade of their dorm room, hide away in the walls of the university. And finally, one day they’d speak of their days beyond, what would happen once their undergraduate years came to an end.
“You will go back to Italy,” Darcy said. “What else is there to do?”
“No, no, I want to stay. Can’t I stay here, with you? Tell me you’d consider it?”
“Hmm …”
“Darcy, please? I cannot be without you.”
“Bene,” he said. “Come una famiglia.”
“Sempre.”
But slowly, over the next year, what would change? What alteration did Darcy witness in his lover? In the finery of his clothes through their second year at university and into their third, in the quality of the food he’d order, in his lack of complaints about the bourgeoisie and the kind of people Cambridge attracted. Maybe Darcy offered to always pay for dinner. But maybe Giovanni wanted more, to really be as well-to-do as his companion.
Bron allowed this to play out, pushed Giovanni into telling one person, now two, about his secret relationship. Darcy being outed. And then, when would have Darcy brought an end to all that? And when would he have first laid eyes on Giovanni’s sister? Of course he would’ve known of her. Certainly Mr. Edwards would’ve enquired as to who was the beautiful girl who stood beside Giovanni in every family photograph, who had the same beauty as him: the dark locks, tan skin, the brown eyes that held you captive the moment you caught them. She had also started at the university, Giovanni would explain, a year after them, with big dreams of one day being a movie star. When Darcy and Mr. Edwards finally witnessed the siblings together in the flesh, they would have experienced the same intelligence and wild laugh through two different bodies, nearer in nearness than ever he’d thought brother and sister could be. It was something about the way they looked at each other, an unspoken language understood with the bat of an eyelid, the slightest of gestures, which made the other move in fluid response. There was no doubt Giovanni would have told his sister, his confidante, about his lover. Unless he hadn’t …
For one day, one evening in autumn, she turned up to her brother’s dorm room, and he refused to admit her entry. His voice was strained—he was a wreck, but he wouldn’t explain why.
“What is wrong, Gio tell me?” she said.
“Just go, go!”
She combed through countless thoughts that might explain her brother’s wave of sudden grief, but she couldn’t think of anything. Unsure what to do, how to help, she’d gone to the Edwardses—alone, in the hope of gaining answers. She apologized for her brother’s absence. Work had caught up with him, she said, and she hoped they wouldn’t mind her attending alone; she needed an escape from the workload herself. Mr. Edwards, delighted, took her under his wing, and complimented the grace with which she held herself, the way she fit the glass of wine to her lips. She was glad to feel a semblance of normalcy. She also rather fancied the son, and finally they’d have some time alone.
But of course Darcy’s mind was elsewhere. He had just broken his boyfriend’s heart, and in doing so, his own. Why was Giovanni’s sister here? Had she been sent there on her brother’s behalf? Did she have something she wanted to say to him? He’d bite his fingers with worry, but as the night wore on, he’d catch onto her light attempts at flirtation. He’d play along because it was easier to do so than not. And he needed to prove that he could.
Then, later that night, after her departure:
